Shaksper not Shakespeare

Front matter

xQ°.

WILLIAM H. EDWARDS

Author of " The Butterflies of North America," "A Voyage up the River Amazon," etc.

Part I

I. The Family of William Shaksper, II. As to the House in which John Shaksper Lived

III. The School advantages of. the Boy William,

IV. The Youth of William Shaksper, . V. Whither?

VI. The Life of William on entering London, VII. The Theaters in London, VIII. William Shaksper's Thirst for Wealth, . IX. The Testimony of the Plays, .

33 40

49 94

Part II

X. References to Shakespeare, Author or Works, or

to the Player, Shaksper, or Shakspere, , . 259

XI. The First Folio, 304

XII. Heminge and Condell, 350

XIII. The Sonnets, , - . 365

XIV. Last years at Stratford, and death of Shaksper, . 375 XV. That William Shaksper never learned to write, . 385

XVI. Further evidence of the ignorance of contemporaries respecting William Shaksper, . . . 413 XVII. Absence of allusions to Stratford-on-Avon, or to Warwickshire, m the Plays; the Authors unobservant of Nature, ...... 430

XVIII. Views of the Baynes School, 438

(ix)

CONTENTS.

XIX. Views of the Phillipps School; of Fleay and some other commentators, XX. The Smattering, Picking-tip School, XXI. The Ivikenesses of William Shaksper, XXII. A Suggestion, ....

XXIII. The Summing Up,

I.IST OF II.LUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

I. Fac-simile of John Shaksper's name, . . 8

2-4. Other styles of same, .... 8

5. Same, with terminal German r, . . .9

6. Another, with open German terminal r, . . 9

7. Same, with terminal e following the German r, . 9, 10

8. The real boy Shaksper, .... 26

9. Rolfe's notion of boy Shaksper, . . .27

10. William Kemp, Shaksper's Instructor in Comedy, 60

11. Richard Tarleton, another clown of same Company, 61

12. Interior of the Swan Theater, 1596 . . .106

13. William Shaksper's pretended signature to deed,

from Malone, ..... 387

14. The same, Boston Library version, . . 390

15. The pretended signature to a mortgage, Boston Li-

brary version, ..... 39^

16. The five pretended signatures. Deed, Mortgage, and

Will, after Drake, . . . . .392

17. Malone's copy of the three Will signatures, . 394

19. Second and third of the Will signatures, Boston Li-

brary version, ..... 396

20. The letters a, k, s, p, of the three Will signatures,

21. The three Will signatures, from Lee, . . 400

22. Fac-simile of the name John Shaksper, . . 405

23. The counterfeit signature of William Shaksper in the

Florio Montaigne, . . . . .411

24. The Droeshout likeness of William Shaksper, , 465

25. The Flower Portrait of William Shaksper, . . 469

26. Macmonnies' Statue of William Shaksper, . 472

27. The Stratford Bust, . . . . .474

28. The Kasselstadt Death Mask of no one knows whom, 482

29. Lord Ronald Gower's composition likeness of Will-

iam Shaksper, at Stratford, .... 484

(xi)

THE PROPOSITION.

That William Shaksper could not have written the "Shakespeare" poems and plays.

"It must either be shown that Bacon did actually write them, in which case Shaksper was not their author, or that Shakspere could not possibly have written them, in which case somebody else must have done so." Alfred Russel Wallace, IvX.D., F.R.S., etc., etc., in the Arena, July, 1893.

"The whole case seems to lie in this: that the burden of proving that Shakspere did not write the works rests upon those who say he did not write them, and as yet these persons have not submitted an item of proof." ("Ivistener"), Boston Transcript, 6th November, 1897.

THE DEMONSTRATION.

I propose to show that William Shaksper, often called Shakspere, could not possibly have written the works attributed to him under the name of ' 'William Shakespeare", or "Shake-speare" , in which case, according to Dr. Wallace, "somebody else must have done so". It matters not who that somebody was. The poems and plays are in evidence that, in the time of Elizabeth and James, there lived one man or several men who wrote them; but that the man was the player whose family name was ' 'Shaksper' ' , and whose name is appended to a deed and a mortgage "Shaksper" and "Shakspar" and three times to a will "Shaksper",

5 shaksp:sr not shakb;sp:^ar:^.

there is no evidence; there is nothing but inference, conjecture, unwarranted assumption and baseless (though general) reputation. During his life of fifty-two years none of his relations, neighbors, or intimates, and none of his contemporaries, testified that this man was the author of these works. The story originated after his death — in mockery, and gathered strength as the years went by, for the simple reason that originally nobody cared for the Shakespeare plays, or who wrote them. Towards the close of the seventeenth century, when all who had known anything of the matter had passed away, the legend received a fresh impetus from certain antiquarians and story-tellers; and when, two generations ago, some one bethought him of looking into the matter, the whole world was attributing the plays to illiterate William Shaksper. A great deal of investigation has been going on during these last years, and as the result, I undertake to show that the possibilities and facts are all against the Stratford man. I propose also to satisfy the requirement of the lyistener of the Transcript.

I shall ground my arguments largely on citations from the 9th (and last) edition of Mr. J. O. Halliwell- Phillipps' "Outlines of the lyife of Shakespeare," I^ondon, 1890, and Dr. C. J. Ingleby's "Centurie of Prayse", 2d edition, edited by Miss I^ucy Toulmin Smith, 1879.

Mr. F. G. Fleay, one of the most eminent of the Shakespearian scholars, says: "The documents on which the facts of his (William Shaksper's) private life are founded have been excellently well collected and arranged in the Outlines, etc., by Mr. Phillipps. This book is a treasure house of documents, and it is the; proposition. 3

greatly to be regretted tliat they are not published by themselves".

The suggestion of Mr. Fleay seems to have been acted on by Mr. Daniel W. Wilder, who in 1893, at Boston, published "The lyife of Shakespeare (Shaksper) compiled from the best sources without Comment' ' . He copies word for word all the facts given by Mr. Phillipps, 8th edition. Mr. Wilder says in his preface: "Mr. Phillipps' studies embraced the whole field of our earlier literature. . . . Gradually he came to concentrate himself upon Shakespeare (Shaksper) alone, and more particularly upon the facts of his life' ' . The other work, ' 'The Centurie of Prayse' ' , with its supplement by Dr. F. J. Furnivall, 1886, is the result of a painstaking search through all English literature, poets, prose writers, records of every description, from diaries and note books to the records of the Master of the Revels, (as to the names of the plays supposed to be Shakespeare's acted before the court). Private correspondence has everywhere been examined for a mention of either player Shaksper, or author Shakespeare, or allusions to the Shakespeare works; and all this for a period of one hundred years, beginning soon after the arrival at London of the player, and soon after the first appearance of the Shakespeare Plays.

Every mention of either player or author or allusion or reference to works for one hundred years by anybody which has come down from that age, with two or three exceptions to be hereafter noted, is given in this valuable book.

I shall also cite Richard Grant White's Memoirs prefixed to his edition of the "Complete Works of

4 SHAKSPEJR NOT SHAKKSPEJARE).

William Shakespeare"; and the same author's Studies in Shakespeare" ; and "Knglan(i Without and Within", etc.; Drake's "Shakespeare and His Times", London, 1817; J. P. Collier's "Life of Shakespeare, and History of the English Stage to the time of Shakespeare' ' , 1843, New York ed., 1853; "Shakespeare's Predecessors in the English Drama", by J. Addington Symonds, London, 1884; F. G. Fleay's "Chronicle History of the Life and Works of William Shakespeare' ' , London, 1886*; and his '-'Chronicle History of the English Stage", 1890; Bishop Wordsworth's "Shakespeare and The Bible", 3d Ed., London, 1880; Professor Barrett Wendell's "William Shakspere", Boston, 1894; Mrs. Dall's, "What we really know about Shakespeare", New York, r895; Ruggles', "The Plays of Shakespeare founded on Literary Forms", Boston, 1895; "Our English Homer, or Shakespeare Historically Considered", by Thomas W. White, London, 1892; Sidney Lee's "Life of William Shakespeare", London and New York, i8g8; Do wd en's "Introduction to Shakespeare", New York, 1895; Prof. G. L. Craik's "English of Shakespeare, and English Literature and Language"; and Edwin's "Reed's Bacon vs. Shakespere", Boston, 1897. Also somewhat from Dr. Doran's "Annals of the Stage" ; and from the writings of the Shakespearian editors, Drs. Rolfe and Furnivall; and rather by way of comment, I shall quote from Smith's "Bacon and Shakespeare", London, 1857; Morgan's "The Shakespearean 'Myth", 3d ed., Cincinnati, 1888; Donnelly's "The Great Crypto-

* The first of these books will be referred to as "Fleay" or "Fleay, Ufe", the other as "Fleay, Hist."

THK PROPOSITION. 5

gram", Chicago, 1888; and Mrs. Potts' "Did Francis Bacon write Shakespeare?", lyondon, 1893.

Halliwell-Phillipps is the greatest authority on the subject of William Shaksper by consent of all Shaksperians. He was a most indefatigable worker, and devoted the greater part of his long life and a great part of his fortune to collecting the facts relating to him of Stratford, under the belief that he was the same individual as the author Shakespeare, and in searching for documents to illustrate his life. Consequently we know a vast deal about William Shaksper, and about everybody related to him, his grandfather, his father, his brothers and sisters, his daughters and sons-in-law, "and his cousins and his aunts"; also about Stratford-on-Avon. We know of this William from his boyhood to his departure for I^ondon, and in lyondon and Stratford again to the day of his death and then to his burial. We know of him as a player, as part proprietor of one or more theaters, as poor, and as rich. We have in great detail his business transactions, his purchase of lands and houses, his deeds and mortgages, his business of loaning money, his suits at law; his trading in various lines, but surprisingly 7iothing whatever concerning any literary employment or proclivities. A thousand times Mr. Phillipps speaks of him as "the great dramatist", or "the bard of our admiration' ' . Kven in the index he itemizes about ' 'the great dramatist". His two large volumes comprise nine hundred pages, — and after all, striking out some few elegiac verses, or eulogies, from the beginning of the successive Folio editions of the Shakespeare Plays, for good and sufficient reasons, (which I shall give in due time) there is not one line in the whole work that

6 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKKSPEARB;.

identifies William Shaksper as the author of the poems and plays — not one line. We are made to know about him in every aspect but that of author, and there history is silent. The biography, therefore, is of no more value in the case than would have been that of Robert Arden, his grandfather. Mr. Phillipps has carved for himself an unbeautiful idol, out of a shaky p/ece of timber, and grovels before it as if he were a Polynesian or a Hindoo. The waste of time and labor shown by his "Outlines" is pitiful. However, as most people believe, without knowing why, just as Mr. Phillipps believed, I have to follow his lead, but before I get through I will substantiate my proposition.

The name Shakespeare is quite another etymologically and orthographically from Shagsper, or Shakspere, or Shaksper, or Shaxpeyr, or Shackysper, or Shaxper. It is not in evidence that any author lived in tbe age of Elizabeth whose family and baptismal name was William Shakespeare, or Shake-speare. There is no such historical man — no individual known who bore that name — and the inference is fair that the name as printed upon certain poems and plays was a pseudonym, like that of "Mark Twain" or of "George Bliot". Many conjectures have been ventured as to the real author, but there have never been proofs, and the right, even now, in 1900, remains an open question. Nevertheless, without proof, the authorship has been attributed to a player, later a manager in and a proprietor of a I^ondon theater, one William Shaksper, and books innumerable have been written on the cool assumption that he was the man. Now the exposure of his claim is the object of this writing.

PART I.

SHAKSPER NOT SHAKESPEARE.

Chapter I. The Family Of William Shaksper

The family of the player were known to their neighbors as Shaksper; that is, the first syllable had the sound of back, the second of per, e short, making Shaksper. As no one of them in all their generations ^ preceding the pla5^er had known how to write, there is no evidence from themselves as to the spelling or pronunciation of the name. It was written by other persons, however, in a variety of forms, but almost always expresses the sound Shak-sper. R, G. White has given thirty of these forms, and other authors have collected nearly as many more.

In the records of the town council of Stratford, and of the Court of Records, the name is written many times. We know this because Halliwell-Phillipps has printed every mention of John Shaksper which has been found. In his pages are to be seen Shaksper, Shakys- -per, Shaxper, Shaxpur, Shaxysper, Shexper, Shakisper, Shakspeyr, Shakgspeyr, Shacksper, Shaxpere, Shakspere, Shaksbere, Shakspear, Mr. PhilHpps gives many fac-similes of the name John Shaksper as written. Also of Mary Shaksper, John's wife, and one of

8 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKKSPKARB.

his uncle, Hary Shaksper. I find the name in these

fac-similes thirty-eight times. We have Shakpeyr or

Shakkspeyr fifteen times. Cut i shows this style of

signature:

Nineteen are Shaksper, Shakysper, some as shown in Cut 2 (the last letter read r by Phillipps):

Others end in the ordinary modern r, as in Cut 3:

A variation of the r in 3 is shown in Cut 4, page 232. Phillipps reads the name Shakyspere, but it is nothing otherwise than Shakysper:

THK FAMII^Y of WILI.IAM SHAKSPKR. 9

Others have the terminal r in the German form, as seen in Cut 5, taken from H.-P., 11, 236:

Phillipps reads this letter as r, but the same letter written by a rapid or an inexpert penman, so as to open and become like a w, as in Cut 6 (11, 239), he reads re:

There are a few signatures where the r (like that in Cut 3) and e, each distinct, are undoubtedly blended into one character, but in nearly all cases the final letter is merely an expanded r. If the scrivener desired to make re, with a German r, he wrote it as in Cut 7 (H.-P., II, 13), each letter distinct:

Another fine example of this distinct r and e is seen in H.-P., II, 90. Wherever there is the slightest flourish at the extremity of the r (as, for example. Cut 4), Phillipps reads the letter as re, for it would lO SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKESPKARB.

be painful if the name of the ' ' bard of our admiration ' ' could not be made to end with the two magical letters. But a German r, when made separately, naturally carries a flourish at the extremity, as seen in Malone's figure of that letter accompanying his fac-simile of Shaksper's signature to the deed of 1612, and repeated herein. Chapter XV. Also as seen in Cut 8, an enlarged fac-simile of a script r from Woodberry's ' ' Method of Learning the German Language:"

It is plain that the German r carries a flourish that has sometimes been taken for an e.

The use of the German r, we are told, was common among scriveners during the reigns of Elizabeth and James ; but that it was also used half a century later can be seen in the fac-simile of John Milton's contract with Samuel Symons for the sale of the manuscript of Paradise Lost, given in Pickering's edition of Milton's Works, Vol. i. In this the German r repeatedly occurs in such words as " whereby", "whereof", and "were", followed by a distinct e of the same species as the one which precedes the r in these same words. Inasmuch as nearly, if not quite all, the mentions of John Shaksper's name occur in the records, and were therefore written by scriveners, the larger part of them undoubtedly ending in r, as seen in cuts 1-4, it is to be presumed that these sprawling characters spoken of were intended for r also. Fifteen of the fac- similes have the first syllable the; family of WIIvIvIAM shaksper. II

of the surname Shax. It is evident that John was known among his neighbors as Shaxper or Shaksper, and nothing else. His son WilHam, therefore, began life as William Shaksper or Shaxper.

R. G. White says : ' ' The name sometimes appears as Chaksper or Shaksper. It is possible that Shakespeare is a corruption of some name of a more peaceful meaning, and therefore perhaps of humbler derivation. ' ' Dr. Morgan says : ' ' The name is supposed to have been simply Jacques Pierre (John Peter). This Shak is the present mispronunciation of Jacques prevalent in Warwickshire. ' ' *

Phillipps, II, 59, prints a letter from Abraham Sturley, of Stratford, to Richard Quiney, a townsman, living in lyondon, 4th November, 1598, asking his aid in getting some money ' ' through our countriman Mr. Wm. Shak." Shak is not Shake, and the mention shows what the pronunciation of the first syllable of the player's name was. This sort of abbreviation of a surname is not uncommon in our

* "In all the forms (of the Shaksper name) tabulated by Wise, the one printed on the title pages of the plays and poems "Shakespeare", does not appear. It is unique. So far as we know, no person in Stratford, or in any other part of the kingdom, previous to the publication of the Venus and Adonis, wrote it in that way. Iviteiature had an absolute monopoly of it." Reed, 13. " In Grecian mythology, Pallas Athene was the goddess of wisdom, philosophy, poetry and the fine arts. Her original name was simply Pallas, a word derived from pellein, signif jdng to brandish or shake. She was generally represented with a spear. Athens, the home of the drama, was under the protection of this Spear-shaker. In our age such a signature would be understood at once as a pseudonym." Id. 14.

12 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKKSPKARK.

country among English emigrants. In a mining village which I lived in, Billy Clatworthy went by the name of Billy Clat ; Mrs. Cadwallader, Mrs. Cad ; and Mrs. Shepherd, Mrs. Shep. So, to a Stratford man, William Shaksper was Wm. Shak.

William Shaksper was the son of John Shaksper, who in his younger daj^s had been a tenant of Robert Arden, farmer. After Arden's death, John married Mary, his daughter, and at an uncertain date removed to Stratford-on-Avon, where he practiced the trade of a butcher. H.-P. tells us, I, 35, that " for some years subsequently to this period (his removal) John Shaksper was a humble tradesman, holding no conspicuous position in the town". Aubrey says that John was a butcher, and that young William, as he had been told by some of the neighbors, "exercised his father's trade".

Phillipps, I, 178, says that "both families" — the Shakspers and the Ardens — ^were really descended from obscure English country yeomen ; and on page 55, "that nearly every one of the boys connections was a farmer". Again, on page 38, that "both parents were absolutely illiterate". As it was then, so it had ever been, always peasants or obscure country yeomen. "For years the European world grew upon a single type, in which the forms of the fathers' thought were the forms of the sons, and the last descendant was occupied in treading into paths the foot-prints of his distant ancestors." Froude, Hist. Eng., I, i.

Dr. Johnson asserts that ' ' in the time of Shakespeare, the lower classes were but just emerging from barbarity".

Th:^ pamiIvY op wiIvIvIAm shakspeJr. 13

" The inventory of Robert Arden's (father to Mary) goods (H.-P. says he was a farmer and nothing more), which was taken shortly after his death, in 1556, enables us to realize the kind of life that was followed by the poet's mother during her girlhood. In the total absence of books or means of intellectual education, her requirements must have been restricted to an experimental knowledge of matters connected with the farm.

' ' There can be no doubt that the maiden ^pent most of her time in the homeliest of rustic employments; and it is not impossible . . . she occasionally assisted in the more robust occupations of the field. . . . Existence was passed in her father's house in some respects, we should say, rather after the manner of pigs than of human beings. . . . There were no table knives, no forks, no crockery. The food was manipulated on flat pieces of stout wood. The means of ablution were lamentably defective ; what were called towels were merely for wiping the hands after a meal, and there was not a single wash basin in the establishment. As for the inmates and other laborers, it was very seldom indeed, if ever, that the3^ either washed their hands or combed their hair. ' ' H.-P., 28.

It is necessary to call attention to these particulars that the early familiarity of William Shaksper with the ways and manners of gentlewomen, not to speak of ladies, countesses, duchesses, princesses and queens, may be estimated. His wife was just such another rustic as his mother, yet a writer in the Atlantic Monthly, for December, 1897, suggests that the wife

14 SHAKSPSR NOT SHAKKSPBJARB).

"served as raw material to be worked up into Imogenes and Rosalinds — enchanting creatures" !

A great deal of labor has been expended in an effort to make the Ardens to have been of gentle birth, but so high an authority as Dowden is compelled to say: "That these Ardens wxre connected with an ancient family of gentle folk of that name has been asserted, and may be true, but the statement cannot be proved",

"Stratford then contained about 1800 inhabitants, who dwelt chiefly in thatched cottages, which straggled over the ground, etc. The streets were foul with offal, mud, muck heaps and reeking stable refuse, the accumulation of which the town ordinances and the infliction of which fines could not prevent, even before the doors of the better sort of people." R. G. White, 21. Cottages of that day in Stratford consisted of mud walls and a thatched roof. See H.- P., 205.

"At this period, and for many generations afterwards, the sanitary condition of the thoroughfares of Stratford-on-Avon was simply terrible Streamlets of a water power sufficient for the operation of corn mills meandered through the town. , . . Here and there small middens were ever in the course of accumulation, the receptacles of offal and every species of nastiness. A regulation for the removal of these collections to certain specified localities interspersed through the borough, and known as common dunghills, appears to have been the extent of the interference that the authorities ventured or cared to exercise in such matters. Sometimes when the nuisance was thought to be sufficiently flagrant, they made a raid

THS FAMIIvY OP WII.I.IAM SHAKSPEJR. 1 5

on those inhabitants who had suffered their refuse to accumulate largely in the highways. On one of these occasions, in April, 1552, John Shaksper was amerced in the sum of twelve pence for having amassed what was no doubt a conspicuous sterquinariuni before his house in Henley street; and under these unsavory circumstances does the history of the poet's father commence in the records of England". H.-P., I, 24. Garrick described Stratford-on-Avon a hundred years later (1769), as "the most dirty, unseemly, ill-paved, wretched-looking town in all Britain. ' '

1 6 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKE;SPB;ARE;.

Chapter II

AS TO THE HOUSE IN WHICH JOHN SHAKSPER IvIVED.

I quote White's "England Without and Within," p. 526: "Of all that I saw connected with his (William Shaksper) memory, his house was the most disappointing; and more, it was sad, depressing. The house had recently been 'restored,' and so destroyed. Its outside has an air of newness that is positively offensive. All expression of rural antiquity has been scraped and painted, and roofed, and clap-boarded out of it.

"Within, however, not much of this smoothing has been done. My heart sank within me as I looked around upon the rude, mean dwelling-place of him who had filled the world with the splendor of his imaginings. It is called a house, and any building intended for a dwelling-place is a house; but the interior of this one is hardly that of a rustic cottage; it is almost that of a hovel, poverty-stricken, squalid, kennel-like. A house so cheerless and comfortless I had not seen in rural England. The poorest, meanest farm-house that I had ever entered in New England or on lyong Island was a more cheerful habitation. And amid these sordid surroundings William Shakespeare grew to manhood. . . . Then for the first time I knew and felt from how low a condition of life Shakepeare had arisen. For his family were not reduced to

HOUSK IN WHICH JOHN SHAKSPEJR WVKD. 1 7

this; they had risen to it. This was John Shaksper's home in the days of his brief prosperity. . . . The upper part of the house, to which you climb by a little rude stairway that is hardly good enough for a decent stable, has been turned into a museum of doubtful relics and gimcracks, and is made as unlike as possible what it must have been when Shakespeare lived there. There is very little of this museum that is worth attention, but there is one object of some interest. It is a letter written to Wm. Shackspere by Richard Quiney, of Stratford, asking for a loan of money. This scrap of paper has the distinction of being the only existing thing, except his will, that we know must have been in Shakespeare's hands, for as to the Florio Montaigne, others whose" judgment on such a point is worth mine ten times over, think, as I do, that it is a forgery."

Further: ' 'To Anne Hathaway' s cottage at Shottery I went, taking the path through the fields which Shakespeare took too often for his happiness. There is little to be said about this house, which is merely a thatched cottage of the same grade as the house in Henley street — in its original condition a picturesque object in a landscape, but the lowliest sort of human habitation. I sat upon the settle by the great fireplace, where the wonderful boy of eighteen was ensnared by the woman of twenty-six. I could not help but think of the toil, the wretchedness, the perplexity, and the shame that were born to him beneath that roof. . . . Thus ended my visit to Stratford-on- Avon, where I advise no one to go who would preserve any elevated idea connected with Shakespeare's per-

1 8 SHASKPER NOT SHAKESPEJARE;.

sonality. ... It was with a sense of mingled gloom and wrong of rightful expectation that I turned my back upon Stratford-on- Avon. ' '

[Mrs. Dall assures her readers that Halliwell-Phillipps ' 'is the highest authority in all that concerns the life of William Shakespeare", meaning William Shaksper, of Stratford. Mr. Phillipps tells us that John Shaksper and Mary, his wife, "were really descended from obscure yeomen", and that "both were absolutely illiterate." Further, that John began life in Stratford "as an humble tradesman", either a butcher or a wool dealer, or both. Yet Mrs. Dall can say: "As to his (William Shaksper' s) social station, it was that to which New England is indebted for her best citizens — for the Winthrops, the Peabodys, the Rogerses, and Lawrences and the Appletons" — which certainly is mighty hard on the Winthrops, etc. Undoubtedly some of the men and women who emigrated to New England after 1620 were of the station to which John Shaksper belonged, absolutel}^ illiterate, obscure yeomen, or humble tradesmen, but it was a far cry from them to the Winthrops and Appletons. One set was at the bottom, the mud sills, the other was the top of the structure. Dr. lyconard Bacon says: "The principal planters of Massachusetts were English country gentlemen of no inconsiderable fortune, of enlarged understanding improved by liberal education' ' .

Dr. Byington also adds his testimony: "The Puritans who came to Massachusetts Bay were, for the most part, in comfortable circumstances at home, with good education and with good social connections in

HOUSi; IN WHICH JOHN SHAKSPER IvIVED. 1 9

Kngland; and an unusual proportion of them were graduates from English Universities."

Mrs. Dall heads her list of authorities for the life of William Shaksper with Charles Knight's "Life of Shakespeare", — a work of imagination strictly, built up to suit the man who, he thinks, wrote the Shakespeare plays, but without one historical fact to support it.]

20 SHAKSPEJR NOT shak:^sp:^ars;.

CHAPTER III. THE SCHOOIv ADVANTAGES OF THE BOY WILLIAM

"It must have been about this period, 1568, that Shakespeare (Shaksper) entered into the mysteries of the horn-book and the A, B, C. Although both his parents were absolutely illiterate, they had the sagacity to appreciate the importance of an education for their son, and the poet, somehow or other, was taught to read and write, the necessary preliminaries to admission into the Free Schools. There were few persons in Stratford capable of initiating him even into these preparatory accomplishments'", etc. H.-P., I, 38. As a matter of fact, there is.no proof whatever that William ever went to any sort of school, or ever learned to read; and as to his illiterate parents having the sagacity to appreciate the importance of his learning, the probability is that as became such illiterate people, they cared nothing about it. The Shakspers had got on very well so far without that accomplishment. ' 'Although there is no certain information on the subject, it may perhaps be assumed that at this time boys usually entered the free schools at the age of seven. ... If so, unless its system of instruction differed essentially from that pursued in other establishments of a similar character, his earliest knowledge of Latin was derived from two well-known books of the time, the 'Accidence', and the 'Sententiae Pueriles'. The best authorities unite in telling us